Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans 11

Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans 11

Stuart’s parents early removed to Newport, where the son had the

advantage of tuition in English and Latin, from the assistant minister

of venerable Trinity parish; but in his boyhood Stuart seems to have

shown none of those dominant characteristics which later were so

strongly developed both in the artist and in the man, unless it may be

the predilection for pranks and practical jokes that early manifested

itself.

 

The earliest picture that can be recognized as from the brush of Gilbert

Stuart, is a pair of Spanish dogs belonging to the famous Dr. William

Hunter, of Newport, which Stuart is said to have painted when in his

fourteenth year; and what are claimed to be his first portraits, those

of Mr. and Mrs. Bannister, have been so nearly destroyed by

“restoration,” that nothing of the original work remains to show any

merit the pictures may have possessed.

 

Stuart’s first instruction in art was received from Cosmo Alexander, a

Scotchman, who passed a few years in the colonies painting a number of

interesting portraits in the affected, perfunctory manner of the period.

Of Alexander nothing was known until recent investigations by the writer

discovered him to be a great-grandson of George Jamesone, whom Walpole

calls “the Vandyke of Scotland.” Alexander took Stuart, then in his

eighteenth year, back with him to Scotland, to acquire a greater

knowledge of art than was possible in the colonies at that time; and

Stuart is claimed to have been at this period a student at the

University of Glasgow. But this tradition, like that previously

mentioned, is shattered, as tradition almost always is shattered, by the

cold, unimaginative record, which fails to show his name on the

matriculation register.

 

Alexander died not long after reaching Edinburgh, and Stuart was left,

according to his biographers, in the care of Alexander’s friend, “Sir

George Chambers,” who “quickly followed Alexander to the grave,” leaving

Stuart without protection. But this story is manifestly without

foundation, as there _was_ no “Sir George Chambers” at the period

considered. There was, however, a Scotch painter of some repute, Sir

George Chalmers, of Cults, who had married either a sister or a daughter

of Cosmo Alexander; and this Sir George Chalmers is doubtless the person

intended, although he lived on until 1791, so that it could not have

been his demise that threw Stuart upon his own resources, which, being

few, necessitated his working his way home, on a collier, after a few

months’ absence.

 

Stuart returned to America from Scotland at a period of intense

excitement. The Boston Port bill had just been received, assuring what

the Stamp Act had initiated, and the tories and the patriots were being

marshalled according to their particular bias. It was not a time for the

peaceful arts. It was the time for action and for town meetings. Before

the echoes of Lexington and Concord had died away, “Gilbert Stewart the

snuff-grinder” hied himself away to Nova Scotia, leaving his wife and

family behind. At this epoch Gilbert Stuart, the future painter, was in

his twentieth year, and apparently had inherited from his father

sentiments of loyalty to the Crown, so that instead of going forth to

battle for his native land, as many no older than he did, he embarked

for England, the day before the action at Bunker Hill, with the

ostensible object of seeking the Mecca of all of our early artists, the

studio of Benjamin West.

 

Once in London, Stuart’s object to seek instruction in painting from

West, seems to have weakened, and he remained in the great metropolis

nearly two years before he knocked at the Newman-street door of the

kindly Pennsylvanian. These months were occupied chiefly with a sister

art in which Stuart was most proficient. He loved music more than he

loved painting--a taste that never forsook him. He played upon several

instruments, but his favorites were the organ and the flute; indeed the

story has come down that his last night in Newport, before sailing, was

spent in playing the flute under the window of one of its fair denizens.

 

This knowledge of music stood Stuart in good stead when an unknown youth

in an unknown land. A few days after his arrival in London, hungry and

penniless, he passed the open door of a church, through which there came

to his ear the strains of a feebly played organ. He ventured in and

found the vestry sitting in judgment upon several applicants for the

position of organist. Receiving permission to enter the competition, he

was selected for the position at a salary of thirty pounds, after having

satisfied the officials of his character, by reference to Mr. William

Grant, whose whole-length portrait Stuart afterward painted.

 

Having some kind of subsistence assured him by the position of organist

he thus secured, Stuart began that desultory dallying with art which

later often left him without a dry crust for his daily bread. While his

work was always serious, his temperament never was, and he seems to have

played cruel jokes upon himself, as carelessly as he did upon others.

For two years his career is almost lost to art; only once in a while did

he gather himself together to work at his painting. He had, however, to

a marked degree, that odd resource of genius which enabled him to work

best and catch up with lost time when under the spur of necessity. In

later days, with sitters besieging his door, he would turn them away,

one by one, until the larder was empty and there was not a penny left in

the purse; then he would go to work and in an incredibly short time

produce one of his masterpieces.

 

Such was the character, in outline, of the man who went to London to

study under West, and, after reaching the metropolis, let two years slip

by him without seeking his chosen master. Finally he went to the famous

American and was received as a pupil and as a member of the painter’s

family, in true apprentice style. Just what Stuart learned from West it

is difficult to imagine;--unless it was how not to paint. For, without

desiring or meaning to join in the hue and cry of to-day against the art

of West, but on the contrary, protesting against the clamor which fails

to consider the conditions that existed in his time and therefore fails

to do him the justice that is his due, there is surely nothing in the

work of the one to suggest anything in the work of the other.

 

For five long and doubtless weary years Stuart plodded under the

guidance of his gentle master until, tired of doing some of the most

important parts of West’s royal commissions, for which his remuneration

was probably only his keep and tuition, without even the chance of

glory, he broke away and opened a studio for himself in New Burlington

Street. If Stuart did gain little in art from West, he gained much of

the invaluable benefit of familiar intercourse with persons of the first

distinction, who were frequenters of the studio of the King’s painter.

This was of great advantage to the young artist when he set up his own

easel, and many of these men became his early sitters.

 

Stuart, while domiciled with West, drew in the schools of the Royal

Academy, attended the lectures of the distinguished William Cruikshank

on anatomy, and listened to the discourses delivered by Sir Joshua

Reynolds on painting. Later on he painted the portraits of each of these

celebrated men, and did enough individual work to indicate the quality

of the artistic stuff that was in him, awaiting an opportunity to

manifest itself. In 1777, the year Stuart went to West, he made his

first exhibition at the Royal Academy. His one contribution is entered

in the catalogue of that year merely as “A Portrait.” It is not

improbable that this was a portrait of his fellow countryman and early

friend, Benjamin Waterhouse, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who preceded

Stuart to London only a short time, and who seems to have remained the

artist’s chum during their sojourn in the English capital. A portrait of

Doctor Waterhouse, by Stuart, was given by the Doctor’s widow, to the

Redwood library, at Newport, together with Stuart’s self-portrait,

wearing a large hat, and dated on the back, 1778. These two portraits

are evidently of a contemporaneous period.

 

In 1779 Stuart exhibited, at the Royal Academy, three pictures: “A Young

Gentleman,” “A Little Girl,” and “A Head.” In 1781 he showed “A Portrait

from Recollection since Death,” and in 1782 made his last exhibition

there, sending a “Portrait of an Artist,” and “A Portrait of a Gentleman

Skating.” This last picture, although painted so early in his career,

has been considered Stuart’s _chef-d’œuvre_. It is a whole-length

portrait of Mr. William Grant, of Congalton, skating in St. James Park.

Mr. Grant was the early friend who bore testimony to Stuart’s character,

whereby Stuart gained the organist’s position soon after his arrival in

London; and the story has come down that Mr. Grant, desiring to help

Stuart, determined to sit for his portrait, and went to Stuart’s room

for a sitting. The day was crisp and cold, and the conversation, not

unnaturally, turned upon skating, a sport much enjoyed by both painter

and sitter, each being rarely skilful at it. Finally paints and brushes

were put away, and the two friends started forth to skate. Stuart was so

struck with the beauty and rhythm of his companion’s motion that he

determined to essay a picture of him thus engaged. The original canvas

was abandoned and a new one begun, showing Mr. Grant not merely upon

skates, but actually skating; and the latent force of the graceful

undulating motion has been rendered with a skill and ability that at

once put Stuart in the front rank of the great portrait-painters of his

day.

 

The remarkable merit of this picture and the wilful unreasonableness of

painters in not signing their works, were curiously shown at the

exhibition of “Pictures by the Old Masters,” held at Burlington House,

in January of 1878. In the printed catalogue of the collection this

picture was attributed to Gainsborough, and attracted and received

marked attention. A writer in the “Saturday Review,” speaking of the

exhibition, remarks: “Turning to the English school, we may observe a

most striking portrait in number 128, in Gallery III. This is set down

as ‘Portrait of W. Grant, Esq., of Congalton, skating in St. James Park.

Thomas Gainsborough, R. A. (?)’ The query is certainly pertinent, for,

while it is difficult to believe that we do not recognize Gainsborough’s

hand in the graceful and silvery look of the landscape in the

background, it is not easy to reconcile the flesh tones of the portrait

itself with any preconceived notion of Gainsborough’s workmanship. The

face has a peculiar firmness and decision in drawing, which reminds one

rather of Raeburn than of Gainsborough, though we do not mean by this to

suggest in any way that Gainsborough wanted decision in either painting

or drawing when he chose to exercise it.”

 

The discussion as to the authorship of this picture waxed warm, the

champions of Raeburn, of Romney, and of Shee, contending with those of

Gainsborough for the prize, which contention was only set at rest by a

grandson of the subject coming out with a card that the picture was by

“the great portrait-painter of America, Gilbert Stuart.” And to Stuart

it did justly belong.

 

With the success of this portrait of Mr. Grant, Stuart was launched upon

the sea of prosperity, and to himself alone, and not to want of